Slammerkin (47 page)

But Jane was gone to the master from whom no one was ever set free, thought her widower. All round him, the people of Monmouth were joining in the old familiar prayers, but he was calling God new names, and not holy ones.

Villain.

Whoreson.

Turd.

The holy bargain made as the saw bit through the boy's leg had been broken.

Then again, how could he prove that there'd ever been any such bargain? The Maker didn't speak, not in words. Not forty years ago, not now. What a fool that boy Thomas had been, to have mistaken God's silence for assent.

The air roared in Mr. Jones's ears. The coffin was lowered now, all the way down, bumping against the others. He stepped up with the first handful of dirt. He threw it down hard, as if to wake his wife, or his Maker, or anyone at all to answer him.

Poor man, thought Mrs. Ash. Pity was sugar under her tongue.

It wasn't that she lacked feeling. She'd been crying on and off for three days and nights, ever since she first saw that purpled body on the kitchen floor. Her heartbeat was still rapid with the shock of the sight. To think of it!
We know neither the day nor the hour.
Of course she grieved for Mrs. Jones, who hadn't been the worst of mistresses, not by any means; the house would sound hollow without the light movement of her feet.

What gall the Reverend Cadwaladyr had, standing up there as pious as a monk, when the shillings in his pocket came from pimping for a murderess! Nance Ash had trekked the five miles to the vicar's house yesterday, to tell him about his curate's shameful connection with the girl who'd killed Mrs. Jones. But to her mortification he'd told her that Cadwaladyr's actions as master of the Crow's Nest were not under the aegis of the Church—and that the case was bad enough without her meddling.

But how comforting the curate's prayers were, still.

For we must needs die,
and are as water spilt on the ground,
which cannot be gathered up again;
neither does God respect any person.

Nance Ash nodded her head at a pious angle. There was a hidden pattern, a reason for all this horror, even if most mortals were too blind to distinguish it.

Behind her ribs was joy. A tiny, parched kernel, but joy nonetheless. Now was it come, the hour of her redemption? Now would the servant be granted her just reward?

Well, Mr. Jones would need looking after, she argued with herself. The man would really have to marry again, for his own sake as well as the child's. A virtuous woman, someone old enough to share his burdens. But still young enough, perhaps, to bear his son.

Nance Ash's heart was thumping. She was only half-ashamed to allow these thoughts so soon. She cradled them to her breast. Head bowed, she prayed that good might come out of evil. She cast a glance at Mr. Jones, and nibbled her lips to make them redder.

The gravediggers stood by the door for spade money. The mourners, filing out, gave more than they could afford, as a mark of respect.

Daffy hung back till everyone was gone, fingering the little paper bag in his pocket. He shivered in the chill of the empty church. For three days he'd felt as if he had a fever. To have had connection with a murderess—to have come within a whisker of marrying a monster—Once more he shut his eyes and thanked his Maker.

The Skyrrid soil in the bag was damp. He scattered a handful on the coffin in the open grave, so his poor mistress would rest easy. Not all of it, mind; he saved a good sprinkle, in case his cough came back this winter. You should always hold a little in reserve, he knew; you never could be sure what evils lay ahead.

Outside in the sun, he was brushing the mountain dust off his hands when he sensed someone walking by his side. Blonde hair, pink freckled skin. He stared at his cousin Gwyn. It had been months since they'd exchanged a word.

'Daffy,' she murmured.

'Gwyneth. A fine crowd,' he added, to get them past the awkward silence.

Her knotted hair was full of light. She nodded, her pale eyes low. 'She was well thought of, your mistress.'

'I never served a better,' said Daffy.

After a little silence, Gwyn said, 'They caught the girl, I heard.'

'Aye.' His walk slowed; he felt sick.

'You must have known her as well as anyone,' said his cousin, letting her curiosity show.

He gave a small, exhausted shrug.

'Would you ever have thought it of her?' she asked, eyes shining.

Daffy started to shake his head, then stopped. 'Now I think of it,' he said unwillingly, 'there was always something about her.'

Gwyn's sky-blue eyes widened. 'Vicious?'

'No, no.' He considered the matter as he walked a little nearer to the girl's side. 'But something more than a maid needs. She was ... troublesome.'

Gwyn allowed the pause to lengthen. 'I heard a thing,' she murmured.

'Oh?'

'That she'd, you know, more than one way of turning a penny.'

'I never heard that,' said Daffy, his eyes on the crowd that stretched ahead of them. Then he turned and looked at his cousin hard. 'What do you mean, exactly?'

She went the loveliest shade of salmon pink. 'I don't know any details.' He could always tell when she was lying. 'But something to do with a tavern. And travellers.'

Daffy shut his eyes for a second and suddenly could see her, Mary Saunders, cider tankard in hand, going down to the Crow's Nest every other night in all weathers to do Mrs. Jones a favour. Her black eyes, her long stride. Of course. His skin burned with embarrassment. For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

It didn't matter now. He had to change the subject before he gave himself away. He turned his eyes on Gwyn, her mild curves in her patched lavender gown. He might as well take his last good look now, before Jennett the Gelder got his stinking hands on her. 'So. Is your day set?' he asked, as civilly as he could manage.

'My day?'

Like a child with a scab, he knew he should leave it alone. But he went on. 'The date of—of your—'

She interrupted him before he had to say the word. 'Oh, no.'

'No?' he repeated, his voice high and bewildered.

'That's all off,' said Gwyn.

Daffy stopped dead.

Her cheeks were burning pink again. 'Jennett's off to Norwich,' she said, 'to marry a widow with a bakery.'

Daffy nodded in what he hoped was a sympathetic manner. A spark landed on the kindling of his heart, rested and glowed. He felt inflammable. He felt as if any minute now he might fall down in the street with excitement.

Without risking any more words, they walked together up the street as far as the Joneses', where Daffy's master stood like a lightning-struck tree, accepting condolences from neighbours.

Abi didn't attend the funeral. When Rhona Davies had arrived to measure the family for mourning weeds, Abi had stayed in her room and wouldn't come down. So now she watched the procession from the attic window.

She'd heard Mr. Jones talk to Hetta of heaven, but those stories were for children. What would happen was, Mrs. Jones would be put in a hole in the churchyard and her spirit would go into the mud. When Abi died, on the other hand, she knew she'd be going back to her own country. Sometimes she longed for it: the bright heat, the wet colours. Always supposing her spirit would be able to find its way.

In the lane behind the house, men were killing a pig; Abi waited for the screeching to end. Every year this sound told her that the long winter was coming and the stock had to be cut down. When she breathed in she caught a waft of the tanning pits in the back lane; fresh pig skins were beginning their slow decay to leather. Meat had to be salted for the fasting season. Soon the birds would be circling overhead, preparing their flight.

Time to go.

Just as Mr. Jones stumbled into his house and shut the front door
on the crowd, Abi was slipping out the back way. Under her left arm she held the bag Mary Saunders had left behind her in their bedroom, filled with bright and gauzy clothes that Abi had never seen Mary in; she thought they must be what women wore in London.

Hidden down her leather stays was the five pounds in silver the Quakers had given her, after considering the matter in silence during a month of meetings. She'd asked Daniel Flyte when he and his Society would expect to be paid back, and he had smiled peculiarly, and said, 'Not in this life.'

Terror tightened now like a brass collar round her neck.

Would she be pursued? She couldn't tell. It all depended on Mr. Jones. He might be too slumped in mourning to think about anything but his wife—but then again, he might take Abi's desertion as another treachery, and call in the professional slave-catchers from Bristol to bring her back in fetters. If there were pursuers, she thought they would probably expect her to take John Niblett's wagon to London. Instead she was going to catch a boat at Chepstow, go down the Severn and around the coast. She had prepared all the sentences she'd need to say.
I go on master's business. Passage to London, please. I have money here.
The Quakers had drawn her a map; she couldn't read the words on it, but she could point to the right roads.

Daniel Flyte had assured her that she'd be safer in London, but she was to look out for the slave-catchers, especially if there was a hue and cry printed about her. He had read her one or two from the newspapers, his voice shaking with indignation.
Run away from her master on the 15th of September,
hers might go,
one Abi Jones, about 30 years of age, with a scar through her left hand. Whoever brings word of her to Mr. Thomas Jones by the Robin Hood tavern in Monmouth, shall have 2 guineas reward for his pains.

But there would be other black faces in the big city, she knew, and the generality of white folk couldn't tell the black ones apart. Daniel Flyte had given her some addresses of houses that might take her in for the night, sympathisers with what he called
the cause.

Abi had no idea what she would find in London. At every turn she expected to be robbed, raped, left for dead. But she knew this much: there was nothing to stay here for now. A voice in her head shouted,
Run.

Mary's dress was a ragged brown thing they'd given her when she'd first arrived at Monmouth Gaol. She wondered where it came from; some woman who'd sold it for the price of a drink, or died in it, maybe? Clothes outlived people, she knew that. Clothes were more of a sure thing. She wondered what they'd done with the white velvet slammerkin. There was good stuff in it, too good to throw away. Had someone tried to wash the blood out of it, or at least to cut good unstained scraps of embroidered velvet out of the train for salvage?

The wet air of autumn blew right through the day cell: in one window and out the other. There was no time, up here above the town, only weather. Mary overheard the odd mention of dates, and remembered what they used to mean, but the calendar was only a childhood story to her now. At Hallowe'en, bonfires scented the air. On the day of All Souls, Mary pictured the people of Monmouth piling new evergreens on all the graves at the back of the church. Mrs. Jones's grave would look almost like the others by now. Was the point of the All Souls ritual to hide the dead away under moss and slime, to speed up the process of forgetting, until memory was only a marsh and all hard things were buried and smoothed over in the wet ground?

She tried not to remember things, but there was nothing else to do. Her whole short past came running at her, the day the purse-snatch tried to take her red ribbon. During the day she could look out of the window, at least. The fields had turned rusty with the coming of winter; she'd never seen earth this colour before. Had her crime stained the whole world?

Images waited for Mary in the night room, where all the prisoners were packed in like bruised fruit and the darkness was absolute. There were no rules here at all. Even survival wasn't obligatory. Those who wanted to might turn their faces to the wall. Sometimes when she woke in the darkness and smelt the bodies all around her, she was briefly deceived into thinking she was back in the Rookery, waiting for Doll to come home. She had found her old self again, the lawless one. She couldn't imagine ever having been clean, or ever having been part of a family; those chains were broken for good.

She stood beside the window of the day room and listened to the crows. One bird sounded harsh, like a crack in the sky. Five together were restless, circling. But more than ten, and the sounds smoothened out in the distance, until the twilight air began to shimmer and vibrate. Finally Mary was coming to understand why the crows cried so unceasingly: to prove they were here.

Two forgers were gaoled in December. They offered to give Mary a great belly, so she'd escape the noose. She told them she was barren, but they weren't listening. They took her on the floor, with a bit of coal sticking into her back. She wondered why anyone would want to enter a body like hers, a tomb of flesh.

She didn't know when, but she knew she was going to die, either with her face against the floor of the night room or swinging from a rope in the market square. It didn't occur to her to protest. She was farther away from the living than the dead, and she couldn't remember the way back. On the worst days, all she longed for was to skim right over this winter like a stone on a lake. A vague wish for time to leap forward—as in her father's last year on earth—and for it to be all at once the day of her death.

Mary found herself talking to her father a lot in the night. It was suddenly easy to do what she'd never done before: forgive Cob Saunders. For his madness, his outrageous demands, the way he'd laid down his life for the sake of eleven stolen days. Mary knew now that death moved through the crowd wearing the face of an ordinary stranger, and tapped you on the shoulder with no warning. Better to run into his embrace.

It was not that she wanted, with any great passion, to die. She still breathed in what air there was and ate the little she could
scrounge, though mostly for something to do. It was more that she no longer thought of herself as truly living, or as having anything left in the world to lose. Everyone she'd ever loved had left her, and always through her own fault. She had broken her mother's heart, abandoned Doll, and killed the mistress who loved her. This made it hard for Mary to imagine a future worth staying alive for.